1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed toward a method and system for tracking and scoring a user based on behaviors of the user on a web site.
2. Description of the Related Art
Several techniques can be used to track a user's or a computer's activities on the Internet, such as tracking browser cookies, internet protocol (IP) addresses, and information embedded in the uniform resource locator (URL) address. IP address tracking is a common method used to track a user's activities and has been around since the inception of the Internet. However, tracking using IP address can be unreliable due to the today's extensive use of proxy server, firewall, and network layout that shares IP addresses among a plurality of computers. For example, certain Internet service provider (ISP) routes all Internet traffic through a proxy server or randomly assigns an IP address to a computer each time the computer logs onto the ISP server. A firewall or proxy server may also mask many client computers on its network as a single IP address. In these cases, tracking a device using IP address becomes entirely unreliable.
Tracking by storing a user's web browser cookies is also common, but this technique is also becoming undesirable and unreliable. Generally, cookies are saved as text strings on the user's local drive and are sent to web servers for session tracking. However, cookies files are often identified as a source for spyware data thus they are often deleted by anti-spyware and anti-virus applications. Further, current Internet web browser applications now give users the option to turn off the cookies. Because of this, using cookies to track a device is both unreliable and undesirable.
A server may also track a user using information embedded in a URL string. This process is implemented by appending a tracking or query string onto the URL string at the server prior to sending the URL string to a browser. When a web browser accesses the content using the URL embedded with tracking information, it sends the URL string back to the server. By keeping track of the embedded information, the server may track user activities. However, this method is prone to hacking and generating unreliable information because the tracking-information-embedded URL can be forwarded to other users via emails, postings, etc. Thus, when other computers or devices use the same URL link, the server will not be able to differentiate between each of those devices. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a technique for monitoring a device's activities on a content provider's web site.